Business Days Calculator

About this calculator

This calculator counts the business days between any two dates, automatically removing weekends and public holidays. Use it to estimate project deadlines, invoice payment windows, contract notice periods, or any situation where calendar days differ from working days. Choose a Saturday–Sunday, Friday–Saturday, or Sunday-only weekend pattern to match your country's work week, and optionally enable US federal or UK bank-holiday exclusions.

How to read your results

The headline figure shows the total number of working days in your selected range. The proportional bar beneath it splits the full calendar span into three segments — teal for working days, grey for weekend days, and red for public holidays — so you can see at a glance how much of the period is actually available for work. Below the bar, the calendar-strip dots give a day-by-day colour-coded view (up to 120 days) with the same three colours.

How it's calculated

The engine iterates every calendar day in the inclusive range [start, end] in UTC to avoid daylight-saving drift. Each day is classified as weekend (if its day-of-week is in the chosen weekend pattern), holiday (if it appears in the built-in or custom holiday set), or working. Weekend takes precedence over holiday. US federal holiday dates follow the rules published by the US Office of Personnel Management: fixed-date holidays shift to Friday when they fall on Saturday and to Monday when they fall on Sunday. UK bank holidays for England and Wales follow the GOV.UK bank-holiday data, with substitute days rolling forward to the next free weekday. Easter is computed using the Anonymous Gregorian algorithm. The "add business days" direction walks forward or backward one day at a time, skipping non-working days until the requested count is exhausted.

Worked example

Count working days from 6 Jan 2025 to 31 Jan 2025, using a Saturday–Sunday weekend and US federal holidays.

26 calendar days total: 19 working days, 6 weekend days, and 1 public holiday (Martin Luther King Jr. Day on 20 Jan 2025).

Frequently asked questions

Does the count include the start and end dates?

Yes. Both the start date and the end date are included in the range, provided they are not weekends or holidays. A range of 2025-01-06 to 2025-01-06 with no exclusions counts as 1 working day.

Which US holidays are recognised?

The calculator applies all 11 US federal holidays: New Year's Day, Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Presidents' Day, Memorial Day, Juneteenth, Independence Day, Labor Day, Columbus Day, Veterans Day, Thanksgiving, and Christmas. Saturday holidays are observed on Friday; Sunday holidays shift to Monday.

Which UK holidays are recognised?

England and Wales bank holidays are included: New Year's Day, Good Friday, Easter Monday, Early May bank holiday, Spring bank holiday, Summer bank holiday, Christmas Day, and Boxing Day. Substitute days are applied automatically when a holiday falls on a weekend.

Can I exclude holidays specific to my company or country?

Yes. Use the Custom holidays field to add any date in yyyy-mm-dd format. Each custom date is treated identically to a built-in public holiday — it is excluded from the working-day count regardless of whether it falls on a weekend.

What does the "Add business days" mode do?

Instead of counting days between two dates, it finds the date that lands exactly N working days after (or before, for negative values) the start date. This is useful for calculating payment due dates, SLA deadlines, and contract notice periods.

How many working days are there in 2026?

2026 has 365 calendar days: 104 fall on weekends and 261 on weekdays (Monday to Friday). Subtracting the 11 US federal holidays observed on weekdays leaves 250 working days in the US; under the England-and-Wales bank-holiday schedule the same arithmetic leaves 253. Pick your country in the calculator to see your own total.

How many federal work days are there in 2026?

All 11 US federal holidays are observed on weekdays in 2026 — Independence Day falls on Saturday, July 4 and is observed on Friday, July 3, while the other ten land on weekdays outright. That leaves 261 − 11 = 250 federal working days.

Why will 2026 have 53 weeks?

A 365-day year covers 52 full weeks plus one extra day. Because 2026 both starts and ends on a Thursday, ISO 8601 week numbering assigns it 53 numbered weeks: week 1 begins on Monday, 29 December 2025, and week 53 begins on Monday, 28 December 2026. That is why some weekly-paid employees see 53 paydays in 2026.

Sources

• Federal Holidays — U.S. Office of Personnel Management
• UK bank holidays — GOV.UK (2016)
• BOE-A-2025-21667 Resolución de 17 de octubre de 2025, de la Dirección General de Trabajo, por la que se publica la relación de fiestas laborales para el año 2026. — Boletín Oficial del Estado (2025)

Reviewed by the YouCalc Team · Last reviewed June 11, 2026